Choices
a short story by Zhou Huibin
(1)
A little book
“It was a dark and
stormy night…” rolling his eyes and slamming the book shut, Metus looked up at
the sky and pondered which author of so little imagination would still use such
a cliché opening for his novel. Descending his vision down to level again, the
sight that greeted him was that of a park trail, illuminated only by
overhanging street lamps. The light from them highlighting the similar looking bushes
and benches below them, making the trail seem to go on forever like a never
ending mirror image into the darkness. To his right, the reservoir was still
and looked as solid as the ground he walked on. Metus was a man of his age, a
man prone to seeing individuality as his own virtue but hating his life for the
long hours of monotonous work at a bank with little satisfaction, not that he
would ever admit it to himself. He loved helping people with their finances or
so he told himself behind a veil of denial and never having the courage to take
the risk to live a more fulfilling life.
He trudged on through
the park, feet dragging behind him. He was so tired, another eleven hour day at
the office and he still needed to be back at work in the morning to try to
‘complete’ a never ending pile of paperwork. Which would probably only make a
factional few in the company earn enough to make the boring monotonous work
worth doing. He lived just across the park, a fifteen minute walk but that
fifteen minutes had translated to hours more at work. This happened after Metus
had overheard months ago in the stall of a washroom, his manager commenting on
how lazy Metus was for leaving early from work, even though he lived so close.
That ‘early’ was 6pm, the official time all of them had signed in a contract
for their working hours to end. So now, peer pressured into proving himself
hardworking, Metus was always one of the last people to leave the office even
on half days. He sighed and looked at the book he had picked up at the lobby of
the office, like most of his life, this too was a hypocrisy. Metus never liked
to read, he merely took the books meant for waiting patrons of the bank at the
end of a work day, so he could pretend to read it and would not have to look at
others on the way home or waste his time with colleagues he did not care for. It
was a small leather bound book just bigger than his hand and had an aged look
to it with yellowed pages. The title of the book was embossed onto the front
cover in the colour gold. It read ‘Choices’.
(2)
Reason for the rain
Choices…, Metus was
almost devoid of it. His life’s choices were dictated by everyone other than
himself. The time to wake, what time he has to reach work, what is considered a
successful life and even the age and time for him to settle down with a girl.
He was just twenty five years old but his face already showed the stress
features of a man much older. Staring at the book for a short while, his vision
roved and saw that he was alone in the park. No sooner had he taken his next
step, when the sky thundered loudly, illuminated arcs of lighting flashed in
the distance and the rain started to pitter patter onto the ground. He was
already running but within seconds, the rain was pounding with such fury that he
could hardly keep his head up to see where he was going. Then in a moment of
clumsiness, his left foot catching onto the side of his right calf, he tripped
and descended onto the concrete of the park trail. He got off the ground
cursing, its main focus was his manager for overloading him with work thus the
overtime and in essence all to blame for him being caught in the rain. Wet and
soaked already, he jogged quickly forwards, hoping to reach home and a warm
shower. When suddenly, the road branched off into two paths, with wide eyes he
thought to himself that this could not be possible. He had walked this path
countless times and not once did he remember seeing or walking into branching
paths. He did not seem to spin or lose his facing when he fell and neither did
he think he had run far enough of a distance before he fell to run off the park
trail he had used so often. What was happening and again, it was entirely his manager’s
fault.
(3)
Branching paths
The rain started to
calm and thus Metus looked up to his left and right, both branches led to a
Gazebo, both perfect shelters from the rain. The left Gazebo was well lit,
white and looked all so safe but the trail beside it seemed endless. The Right
Gazebo on the other hand was white but something must have been wrong with the
light as it was dimly lit but he could just make out it’s trail led to the road
in the distance with a street sign. It was too far for him to read the sign but
he was sure that he could find his way home once he found his bearings. In fact
it was one of his skills since he was a boy, although even he was not
convincing himself in his current loss of direction. Looking in quick
succession at both, he ran towards the left and the safe looking Gazebo,
telling himself he could always go back the other trail when the rain was over.
Reaching the well-lit
Gazebo, he sighed in relief only to be followed by a shout: “Why me!” waving
his hands and stamping his feet in anger. There were so many others more
deserving than him to have suffered this predicament and here he was. Then his
right hand came into view and he saw that he still was holding onto the book
from the office. Having nothing else to do but wait the rain out, he took a
seat and opened the book to read. Not more than a paragraph in, he found out
that the lead character in ‘Choices’ was also named Metus and he too was in a
park. As he continued to read, he felt a sudden chill in his spine and his hair
started to stand as if a small charge of a current was passed through him. The
book was describing the exact events that had just happened to him in detail
and was even describing his inner thoughts. He looked up and felt like a
hundred eyes were on him, no longer was the Gazebo safe, every sound and shadow
was a phantom and he felt trapped. His mind raced and he thought this must be a
trick. Wait he thought, it had to be a trick, his hateful manager and
colleagues must have seen the weather report and had purposely put the book
there for him to pick up. Metus’s ire filled him and he started to hate again. “That
had to be it!” He would show them tomorrow, he was going to kill someone! “CRACK!” The thunder sounded, it was the
loudest one he had heard in his life and he found himself crouching with his
hands over his head. When he finally lifted his head, he saw the book was lying
in front of him open and on its last page, the only word that he could focus on
was ‘Fear’ and as he reached for it, the wind howled and the pages flickered
and landed on a page, whose only line again he could focus on was: “Look behind
you.” Wide eyed and like an obedient dog, he turned his head.
(4) Fear
The sight that greeted
Metus was a silhouette, its limbs grasping the wooden beam it was squatting on.
It leaned on its arms between its legs, leaving claw marks grouched into the
wood. It seemed humanoid in shape, its
skin black as sin but before Metus could view the creature in its entirety, it
screamed a high pitched shrill aimed at the sky. Before he knew what he was
doing, Metus did what he did best, he ran. He ran deeper into the current
pathway trying to escape the hellish creature but behind he could hear it hop
and jump out of sight of the light between the bushes along the pathway,
leaving shadows in the corners of his eye.
The running continued
and for how long, he could not tell, only that his all too deskbound body soon
gave way even after the adrenaline of fear had given him added physical
ability. He stumbled, slumped and soon was on the ground panting and clawing
his way forward but the part that affected Metus most was the silence. He
wanted to turn around, to assure the theory that the creature was not there but
he was too scared to turn around. He thus lifted his head and as he did so, he
froze, eyes widen in fear as much as surprise. Again he was greeted by the
sight of the creature but this time it was standing in the middle of the
entrance of the pathway, metres away. His eyes catching sight that he had somehow
run in a circle back to the well-lit Gazebo. The creature’s head was lowered
and could not be seen but its arm started to extend towards the other path and pointed
with a clawed finger, saying with the same shrill voice: “Freedom.” Where the
arm touched the light outside of the current entrance of the pathway, its hand
started to sizzle and it winched in pain and quickly withdrew it from the light.
So there Metus stood as though in thought but more out of fear than anything
else. Then the fear was replaced by the realisation that all he needed to do
was get past the creature into the protective light beyond and back down the
other path to the road he recognised to…Freedom.
(5)
A beginning or an ending
Metus willed himself to
run but it felt as if he had no control of his body. He was clearly conscious
and able to move his eyes but no matter how much effort he put to get himself to
run forward, it would not listen. He tried picturing it in his head in minute
details, pushing on the heel, swinging the arms and putting one foot before
another but nothing worked. His eyes widened, is this one of the creature’s
powers? He was paralysed and would be slowly clawed to death by it. He did not
want that to happen and willed his mouth to scream…and it did. It then dawned
on him that it was not the creature holding him back, only himself. The
realisation caused him to take a step and with simple inertia, he started
running, the feeling was exhilaration, he would make it and be free of this
night, just a few more seconds. The moment he was within five paces to the left
of the creature, it let off a scream. The scream caused Metus to fall to his
knees and images of all the fears of the unknown future flowed into him since
he was a child, the time he could have told the teacher he needed to use the
bathroom when he was six but instead held it till he wetted his shorts in the
class, the time he could have asked his high school crush Serene out when he
was fourteen but never had the courage…all the way to the time he could have joined
the theatre of dance instead of his current job. It was all the unknown future now
and whether out of embarrassment, social stigma or job stability, he could now admit
to himself that even if he had failed at making those decisions, he would not
have regretted them, for at least he had tried. He found tears’ streaking down
his face but still clear as day was the path to freedom, not more than seven
paces away. He started to move but then he staggered, doubt again filling his
mind. “What if this was a trick? What if there were more creatures out there?”
In that one moment of hesitation, the creature lashed out, its claws tearing
into Metus’s chest in four long deep gouges, blood spilling in forceful
droplets at an angle and again, he ran away from the entrance, seven paces
away.
(6)
An ending
He was not made of
sterner stuff, both in body and mind. All the excuses he made over the years,
telling himself why he did not make all those decisions that could have changed
his life was in the end, all out of fear. When it came to the natural response
of ‘fight or flight’ for a decision that really mattered, he now knew he only ever
responded with one answer. That was the easy route of flight. Then if it did
not turn out right, blame others for forcing the decision on him. This entire
realisation came with a torrent of self-loathing, so much so he could not keep
his tears from blurring his vision as he ran, the tears mixing with the blood
flowing down his body. It was then he saw under a street lamp, the little book
‘Choices’. It was open to the end page and if it really had followed his story,
maybe he could read it to find a way out. He ran with grim determination
towards it. When he got closer, he saw a head come out of the bushes looking
down at the book. It looked familiar and had flowing long hair and gratefully
was all too human. It lifted and to his utter surprise, it was his high school
crush, Serene! She too had grown since high school but she was still as radiant
as ever, her smile the same inviting one that got him to keep going to school
even though he had to endure endless verbal and physical bullying daily. The
same smile attracting him forward like a mirage of water in a desert.
A mix of emotion filled
him and he ran towards the friendly face he had not seen since high school and
leaned in to tell her to get away from the creature behind him. It was then he
saw the head was not connected to a body, its face kept in eternal smile along
with its death. The clawed hands holding the head hidden by the hair loosened
its grip and the head fell. What then, Metus saw shocked him even more than the
decapitated head. It was his own smiling face, except this time it was
connected to a body, the body of the creature that had tormented and chased
him. Metus could take no more and at that moment suffered a heart attack and
died. The creature then proceeded to feed on his now lifeless body, his blood
spilling onto the last page of ‘Choices’, hitting the perfect spot for a full
stop for the last line of the book, which read: “and Metus, which in Latin
stands for fear, was consumed by fear.”
Written by Zhou Huibin (Finished
on the 05/08/2013) All rights reserved.
